I’ve now had my eyes glued to the Federal Communications Commission’s 370+ page National Broadband Plan for 24 hours, and the message is clear: video rules; audio drools. The document goes so far as to propose the creation of video.gov:

“a federated national archive for digital content. Creating such an archive will require tackling digital rights challenges and coordinating among multiple stakeholders. As part of this federated archive, the Executive Branch should create Video.gov, which would be modeled after Data.gov. This platform would house the federal government’s public digital video content, current and historical, and would make it accessible and available to the public. All agencies should be encouraged to release as much video content as possible onto Video.gov.”

Man, does the FCC’s NBP like video, as in video conferencing, IP video, social networking video, the video set-top box market, first responder video data,user-generated videos, high definition video, embedded video, Skype video calls, youtube video, video video video!

To be fair, it makes sense. The NBP is all fixated on how to encourage broadband adoption, and it thinks that the easier it is to watch television on the Internet, the more Americans will migrate there and buy high speed service (or want to; another huge chunk of the plan is about how to make it easier for the millions who don’t have broadband to get it).

It’s sad though the way the plan completely ignores audio/radio use on and off the Internet. I mean, broadcast radio is mentioned in the Grand Prologue to the document. Insert First Pomp and Circumstance March here: “In the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, telephony, radio and television transformed America, unleashing new opportunities for American innovators to create products and industries, new ways for citizens to engage their elected officials and a new foundation for job growth and international competitiveness.”

You get the idea  . . . That Was Then . . . but apparently radio now doesn’t have any role in Internet adoption, at least not to the FCC,  so no need to talk about it in The Plan.  Still, there’s a lot of government audio out there. You can find some  of it on data.gov, and the rest is floating about on various  government sites (hello FBI “gotcha” radio!). I guess we’ll just have to wait until there’s an FCC that notices that people listen as well as look on the ‘Net before it suggests the creation of audio.gov.

“What will the National Broadband Plan mean for this marketplace of artists, radio station owners, Internet entrepreneurs, and music lovers?” he asked at a meeting of the Country Music Association’s Board of Directors on Wednesday. The answer is that it will get more rural country music lovers on line.

One thing is for sure, Genachowski had a good time delivering this pitch . “You thought I was going to say something about my wife leaving me, my dog and my truck, didn’t you?” the FCC’s boss asked the Board.

Relevance needed

But seriously folks, the meat and potatoes of the talk was that the venues for selling country music are going to the Internet. The challenge is to get the country music market to the ‘Net too, Genachowski explained:

“Wal-Mart, who is by far the largest seller of country music, continues to cut down on floor space for CDs.

Why? Well, people increasingly buy music online.

However, according to a CMA survey last June, only 50 percent of core country fans have Internet access at home.

This is, in part, a deployment issue that our National Broadband Plan intends to tackle through a reform of the Universal Service fund. The Plan is intended to get broadband deployed to unserved households around the nation over the next several years. But part of the problem is also an ‘adoption’ problem: 42 percent of core country musicfans who are offline, say they are not interested in getting online.

This dovetails with recent findings by the FCC’s Broadband Team regarding non-adopters. ‘Relevance’ is a key factor cited by people who do not subscribe to high speed Internet access. They don’t see what the Internet can do for them or why it is a service they should subscribe to.”

For Radio Survivor readers not deeply enmeshed in FCC policy, the Universal Service Fund helps subsidize the phone bills of low income people (many of them rural) and rural phone service providers. The National Broadband Plan is going to recommend that the USF be expanded to subsidize high speed Internet as well. In fact, lots of folks in Congress think that any rural telco that gets USF money should have to provide Internet service within X number of years (probably five or so).

Actually, there are studies that suggest that there are very few low income people who don’t know that they need broadband—especially these days when if you want a job at a place like Wal-Mart, you’ve got to apply on line. The price and availability of the service is the real deterrent. But it makes sense that Genachowski would quote CWA’s stats when talking to them. And sure enough, if rural Internet is more widely available and cheaper, more country music fans will doubtless sign up.

I fall to pieces

Anyway, you’ve got to read the end of the talk. “My staff decided to translate this whole speech into ‘Nashvillese’,” Genachowski concluded, “and here’s what they came up with:”

“When I think of those “Country Roads” and “Wide Open Spaces” without broadband, I “Fall to Pieces” and say that’s “Crazy.” We need to address these “Unanswered Prayers.”

“As FCC Chairman, I have friends in high places and “Friends in Low Places,” and I’m pulled to and fro on policy issues, but “I Walk the Line.” That’s because telecomm politics is like a “Ring of Fire.” First I have Senator Rockefeller telling me about a “Coal Miner’s Daughter” who can’t get wireless service in some “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Next, “I’m on the Road Again” to where “The Grass is Blue” and “A Boy Named Sue” stops me and says we need super-duper fast broadband all the way from “Boulder to Birmingham” – and beyond, to “Galveston” and “El Paso.” He complains that his slow dial-up service can’t get to “Amarillo by Morning” and laments that America has gone round & round for years without a National Broadband Plan and plaintively asks, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”?

“I explain – to the “Boy Named Sue” – that this issue is “Always on my Mind” and the lack of a Plan should not make him “Hurt” or a “Man of Constant Sorrow” with his “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Instead, I tell him to “Take it Easy ” — “Don’t Rock the Jukebox”…just try to “Keep on the Sunny Side” and dream “Sweet Dreams” — because a National Broadband Plan is coming. Next week.”

Next Tuesday the Federal Communications Commission will reveal the entirety of its National Broadband Plan, over a year in the making. Required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which authorized $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus spending, The Plan will weigh in on about a thousand broadband related subjects—how to help more people get it, how to help industries provide it, ways to encourage innovations that the FCC hopes will stimulate more broadband adoption, like IP video.

The chances are, though, that it won’t have much to say about radio

Oh yes, it will talk about “radio” spectrum a whole lot—in the sense of licenses from 500 KHz to 2.5 GHz that licensees use to transmit video, voice, text, audio, and whatever. But unlike every other broadband related medium, from social networking through web video, almost no one has anything to say on a policy level about radio delivered over high speed Internet, either through desktops, laptops, netbooks, or smartphones.

Indirectly, however, the National Broadband Plan will no doubt have an impact on both Internet and broadcast radio. Here are my speculations as to why and how. But nota bene, this is strictly thinking out loud stuff; as the saying goes, ‘I’m just talking.’

The plan will get more low income people online, where they will listen to Internet radio more often

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s latest statistics indicate that about 35 percent of all households have no broadband access at home, and over 30 percent of Americans don’t use the Internet at all. Other surveys suggest that it’s a little more complicated than this, in that lots of low income folks cobble together broadband use via the computers of neighbors and libraries. And a Pew Internet and American Life report notes that lots of minorities get their Internet from their mobile phones.

While the National Broadband Plan isn’t going to suggest a South Korea or Australian massive subsidy solution to the digital divide, it will urge Congress to require all Universal Service Fund phone service providers to offer broadband within a given time frame, it will recommend that the USF’s Lifeline program subsidize low income broadband use, it will recommend that Congress support some kind of free or low cost wireless service, and it will offer a myriad of other ways to boost Internet adoption from the bottom up.

This is going to bring more people into cyberspace on a regular basis, especially low income people who currently make up a huge constituency for broadcast radio (and much of its advertising base). They’ll change the nature of the Internet radio, which currently plays to a more middle class audience.

The plan will boost mobile radio

A big focus of the National Broadband Plan will be about getting more spectrum to the wireless industry, which is facing a huge crunch as smartphone adoption and use goes through the roof. FCC Chair Julius Genachowski has already pledged to get about 500 MHz of license spectrum moved over in various ways to wireless broadband providers. The plan is to create a “Mobile Future Auction,” in Genachowski’s words “an auction permitting existing spectrum licensees, such as television broadcasters in spectrum-starved markets, to voluntarily relinquish spectrum in exchange for a share of auction proceeds, and allow spectrum sharing and other spectrum efficiency measures.”

This is not going to be a smooth transition. The TV broadcasters have already made it very clear that they’re quite leery about this proposal. And even the FCC’s efforts to transition much smaller bands like the Wireless Communications Service region to WiMAX have met with fierce opposition from WCS’s spectrum neighbor, Sirius XM satellite radio.

But as powerful as the National Association of Broadcasters is, if it puts up a full court defense against this trajectory, it’s going to find itself in combat with the wireless industry—without question the most sophisticated communications lobby in Washington, D.C.—and allied with the device manufacturers and to some extent the cable industry, which already regularly does battle with the broadcasters over retransmission consent issues.

Slowly but surely, if only one TV station after another, the spectrum is going to move from the broadcasters to the wireless companies.

What does this mean? It hopefully means faster mobile broadband speeds and lower prices. The wireless industry has a much better record at providing progressively cheaper and better services than cable. That, again, has got to be a boon to Internet radio, which will find itself broadcasting to a progressively larger and more diverse base.

The migration to digital will deconsolidate broadcast radio

It seems likely that traditional over-the-air television broadcasting will fade over the next decade. More and more Americans will watch TV via cable or telco provided optical fiber or IP video. The value of TV licenses will decline and the power of the entities that own them will decline as well. Many of those entities also own conventional broadcast radio stations. Gradually cut loose and allowed to operate on their own or in small networks, these entities could find their rebirth by providing the kind of brick-and-mortal localism that has eluded the Internet so far. It could be that, in the long run, the Internet will be the best thing that could happen to plain old analog broadcast radio.

But again, we’re just talking here. The future is hard to see. One thing I really regret, though, is how little radio fits into policy discussions about broadband. I hope you’ll take a moment to comment on my speculations and ideas.